“Healer! Healer!”
The shyster, who had just taken two lashes of the whip, squeezed his face between the two iron bars and shouted toward the corridor.
The noise, amid the rolling screams and wails of the lower dungeon, was jarring to the ears.
Lao Sun was already on edge, but he had no choice but to grab his medicine box and stride rapidly toward the ninth cell.
“What kind of sorcery are you up to now?” Lao Sun barked, pointing inside. “Playing dead and taking lashes wasn’t enough? Now you’re asking for more?”
The shyster pressed his whole body against the iron grating, oblivious to the lash wounds split open on his back.
His thin, sunken face no longer bore any trace of his earlier bluster — only blank bewilderment and terror.
“Sir!” the shyster yelled, spittle flying. “Just now—did you or did you not put that poison on me?”
Lao Sun’s brow furrowed into a tight knot.
“What nonsense is this!” Lao Sun laughed in fury. “I personally cut the wound open, I personally smeared the ointment on! What, you think that’s not enough?”
The shyster shook his head frantically, shoving his left forearm through the gap in the bars.
“But sir, this arm of mine—” his voice trembled as he blurted out, “it doesn’t hurt at all!”
The moment those words hit the air, Lao Sun’s furious stride ground to a halt, his feet frozen on the flagstones.
How could it not hurt?
The dozens of stout, blood-hot men in the neighboring cells were all writhing on the ground right now.
Some had already clawed the skin off the backs of their hands, desperate to gouge out the flesh beneath.
This cadaver salve rotted everything it touched, burning straight through to the marrow.
“Open the lock!” Lao Sun shouted at the jailer without looking back.
The jailer fumbled for his keys and, shaking, jammed them into the brass padlock.
The iron door had barely creaked open when Lao Sun lunged inside. His gnarled fingers seized the shyster’s left arm, still held out in midair.
“Bring the lamp!” Lao Sun barked without turning.
Little Li, the medical apprentice, hurried over and lowered the oil lamp in his hand.
Pale yellow light fell across the shyster’s forearm.
The half-inch cut lay fully exposed before the two of them.
The moment Lao Sun saw the wound, his breath caught in his chest.
No swelling, no curled, festering flesh, no sickening yellow blisters.
The edges of the cut were clean and straight, covered only by a thin, dark-brown scab. The surrounding skin wasn’t even red — it looked like nothing more than a surface scratch, already beginning to heal shut.
“This—” Little Li’s eyes went wide, the lamp pole shaking in his grip.
Lao Sun said nothing. He pressed two fingers to the shyster’s wrist, taking his pulse.
He closed his eyes, probing the man’s qi and blood, the nourishment of his vital humors.
Pressed deep: the pulse was sinking yet unbroken.
Lifted light: it flowed smooth, not slippery.
The pulse was deep and slow, steady and strong…
He sucked in a sharp breath.
The man’s heart beat a little faster from fear, but there was no sign whatsoever of the violent, surging pulse of poison entering the organs and corrupting the blood.
This shyster hadn’t been poisoned at all!
“Master,” Little Li stammered. “Did the cut maybe go too shallow when you applied the poison? Not enough of the pulp got in?”
“Rubbish!” Lao Sun cut him off.
He pointed toward the neighboring cells.
“Same bowl of cadaver salve, same amount I applied to everyone! Listen to the racket outside — those men rot from a single touch. This venom doesn’t care about dosage!”
Lao Sun released the shyster’s wrist, his body trembling uncontrollably.
His mind churned like a storm, thoughts crashing against one another.
If the poison hadn’t taken, then the imperial envoy’s method of variolation was worthless. The fifty death-row prisoners in this dungeon — and forty thousand soldiers and civilians in Zhenbei Pass — were still doomed to die in the city.
But if the poison had taken…
Lao Sun stared at the shyster’s leering, terrified face, his heart racing.
“Tell me the truth! Before you came into this cell, what did you eat? What did you touch?”
Lao Sun grabbed the shyster by the collar, demanding an answer.
Seeing the healer’s expression, the shyster was overcome with panic and bewilderment.
Scared half to death, he began begging for mercy.
“I’m innocent, sir! I’ve been in this cell for six months — every day I eat moldy sorghum cakes, and I drink nothing but well water drawn right here. I haven’t eaten anything else!”
Lao Sun gripped him tighter. “And your body — have you ever had any serious illness?”
The shyster stuttered, “Year before last… I came down with a terrible typhoid fever, nearly died. I toughed it out on my own. That’s all, I swear!”
Lao Sun released him, thoughts racing.
Typhoid? No.
Typhoid couldn’t suppress the plague mother.
Well water? Prison rations? Impossible.
If it wasn’t the medicine, then it had to be the man himself.
Could it be that this scoundrel was born with something in his blood that neutralized the poison?
Lao Sun had practiced medicine for most of his life, and he’d read in ancient texts of rare individuals with extraordinary meridians and extraordinary constitutions.
If that was truly the case, then this lowly shyster — a man as worthless as mud, who spent his days stirring up trouble on the streets — was the sole cure for forty thousand lives in Zhenbei Pass, and for ten thousand miles of the Great Qian Empire’s northern border!
“General Zhao!” Lao Sun shot to his feet and stormed out of the cell like a madman.
Zhao Heng was standing in the corridor, startled by Lao Sun’s wild expression.
Before he could speak, Lao Sun seized the leather armor on Zhao Heng’s chest.
“Saddle the horses! Saddle them now!” Lao Sun’s voice was hoarse, his eyes bloodshot, roaring in Zhao Heng’s face. “Ride with me to headquarters! This is a matter of grave importance — I must report to the imperial envoy in person!”
Zhao Heng’s expression shifted sharply.
He had never seen this steady, composed physician lose his composure like this.
So Zhao Heng wasted no words. He shoved past the jailer and strode out.
“Bring the horses!”
Half an incense stick later.
Two riders galloped out of the western death prison in Zhenbei Pass, tearing through the city.
The drumming of hooves was urgent and chaotic, shattering the heavy stillness of the long streets.
Snow drove into their faces. Lao Sun pulled his worn sheepskin coat tighter, both fists clenching the reins, straining to keep pace behind Zhao Heng’s horse as they charged toward the envoy’s headquarters.
…
At the same time, in the grand hall of the envoy’s headquarters.
The charcoal brazier burned hot, yet could not dispel the chill in the air.
Xu Qinghuan sat in the broad seat of honor, her desk piled high with reports from every corner.
Her brows bore the cold severity of days without respite.
Qingque carried in a bowl of hot soup, parting the curtain and hurrying to the desk, setting the clay bowl down.
“My lord, drink some hot soup to warm yourself. You haven’t slept in two days,” Qingque coaxed softly.
Xu Qinghuan didn’t look up, her gaze fixed on the latest casualty roster just delivered.
“I can’t drink,” Xu Qinghuan said, her voice carrying an exhaustion she couldn’t hide.
She picked up the cinnabar brush and swept it across a row of names, leaving a stark red mark.
“Liu San, vegetable vendor from the inner city. A family of five — wiped out this morning.” She recited the name.
Her fingertip moved to the next line.
“Zhang Laotie, blacksmith from the south quarter. When plague struck him, to protect his wife, he chained the door with iron wire and set fire to his own shop.”
Xu Qinghuan slammed the roster down on the desk.
“South Cross Street — yesterday morning, three hundred cases reported. By midnight last night, that number had doubled to six hundred.”
She raised her head and looked at Qingque.
“The register from the House of the Living Dead arrived this morning. Southern Cross Street is completely sealed off now. The whole street—seventeen hundred people—all rotted away in their homes. Not a single survivor.”
Qingque sucked in a cold breath, standing frozen, not knowing what to do with herself.
“And that’s only one corner of the inner city.” Xu Qinghuan rose to her feet and walked to the sand table at the center of the hall, her fingers tracing the market districts near Zhenbei Pass. “The old salt merchant’s mansion west of the city, converted into a House of the Living Dead—they sent eight hundred people in yesterday.”
Xu Qinghuan paused for a moment, then let out a sigh.
“This morning, the bodies carried out numbered two thousand.”
She closed her eyes.
“Qingque, do you know what I hate most about Chen Changfeng?” Xu Qinghuan’s voice dropped low.
“If he wanted to kill, he could have brought his troops and slammed against the city gates. But instead, he pushed the common folk into locking their own doors and burning themselves alive. He forced the living in this city to dare not rescue the dead.”
“He doesn’t just want to destroy this city—he wants to grind down our courage, the backbone of the Great Qian army and its people, little by little, until there’s nothing left.”
Xu Qinghuan looked at the spots on the sand table marked with small red flags.
Every red flag meant an outbreak zone.
“Marshal Tie sent word this morning,” she continued. “At the north flank gate, twelve soldiers in the garrison are already showing symptoms—vomiting and fever.”
Xu Qinghuan closed her eyes again, lost in thought. “Marshal Tie had those twelve, along with their squad leaders and section chiefs—thirty-six men in all—executed on the spot. Their bodies were burned to ash.”
Qingque felt her hands and feet go cold.
“It can’t be contained.” Xu Qinghuan opened her eyes. “No matter how fast Marshal Tie’s blade is, it can’t cut through the deathly air that rides in on the wind.”
“The pits outside the city can’t be dug any deeper, and we’ve already burned through more than half our quicklime. Those fifty death-row prisoners are the last move we have.”
Xu Qinghuan sat back down in her high-backed chair.
“If they all die… then Zhenbei Pass truly has nothing left but to wait for death.”
